Sometimes you can’t avoid giving presentations that are heavy on data. Examples of this would be presentations for demographics, market researches and such. So how do you solve this? How do you make your presentations interesting even if it’s full of data and numbers?

Below are 3 solutions:

1. Use Notes pages – use the Notes pane and put some of the data there. You can print this out later to be distributed among your audience.

2. Send to Word – Send your presentation to Microsoft Word.

3. Use letter-sized slides – This is best used when you won’t be projecting slides at all.

I usually give tips on this blog on what a speaker should do or apply in his speech and presentations to make him look professional, make him effective and more interesting and captivating to the audience. On this post however, let me give you a few quick tips on what NOT to do instead:

Begin your talk or presentation with an agenda slide. It’s unnecessary and your audience doesn’t really care. Instead, say or do something that will grab their attention right from the get-go.

Let your audience hold their questions until the end.

Make visual aids that are hard to process. They take the attention of the audience away from you.

Though live presentations are much better than those done on videos, you can still do something about it to make those webinars as closely to being lively and exciting as live ones. Below are things you can do to make your interactive video presentations or webinars interesting:

Bring your own enthusiasm – Be as energetic as possible. Since you don’t have a live audience right in front of you to feed off your energy from, you need to give off just the right amount of excitement be able to motivate your audience.

Don’t sit on a slide too long – Don’t talk about a single slide for a long time. It will just bore your audience.

Create some movement – Use cheesy animations when and where appropriate.

Audio is a priority – Use high quality microphones that deliver high quality audio. Audio is of utmost importance when doing webinars, even more so important than the quality of the video.

In PowerPoint, do you find yourself using the same commands over and over? You can be more efficient in your work if you customize the interface in PowerPoint. So instead of finding commands that you use often and clicking them so many times, you can actually customize not only the Quick Access Toolbar (usually at the top left of your screen) but the entire ribbon as well.

The following tips are from Brenda Bence, who is a corporate branding and personal branding expert.

1. Sign in – by letting your participants sign in, they will get a feel of the room just like how it happens in a real live seminar.

2. Ground rules – by asking your participants to set up the ground rules (like no cellphones, ask questions at the end of every session, listen, focus, etc.), you’ve already started making the webinar interactive.

3. Notification – letting them know that they will be called upon randomly to answer questions will keep them on their toes.

4. Executive presence – have a senior level executive there to answer questions and speak up every once in a while to make participants listen and participate more

5. Prizes – by offering prizes, participants will feel more lively and engaged in the discussion

6. Experience – there is so much we can do with technology now. People are no longer limited to listening only during webinars. You can do so much more like: writing on whiteboards, showing videos, conducting a survey or a poll, drawing arrows, etc.

7. Webcam – when telling a story, it’s best to turn the camera on you so they get to see your expression just like when they’re watching you in person.

8. Feedback – just like in a live seminar, it’s always best to ask for feedback at the end of the session.